Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday January 23, 2012 @06:57PM
from the but-what-do-we-leave-on-the-teacher's-desk dept.

redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."

Yep, but remember some books like say your biology textbook, benefit greatly from this refresh, but a writing book??? Sounds like a partial racket, confirmed by 1k+ college textbook bills. Irregardless of research, some people are making bank on this.

It's an especially fun example of the futility of this sort of "peevery", since the peevers' campaign against "ain't" has had the effect of increasing its use.

The original use of "ain't" many centuries ago was as the contraction for "am not". Now, you might wonder how "am"+"not" gives "ain't", and one answer is that it's the same process that turned "will"+"not" into "won't", which is every bit as silly. Human languages do silly things like that all the time. But the peevers don't seem to rant about "won't"; they only declared a pogrom against "ain't". And the result has been that the common speech in many dialects now also use "ain't" as the contraction for "is"+"not" and "are"+"not". It has become the general negative for all present tense forms of "be".

But really, we should probably let the language peevers have their fun. At least they're not rounding up the ain't-sayers and burning them at the stake. They're just posting peeves in discussions like this, because to them the war against their favorite banned contraction is more important than, say, massive increases in availability and decreases in price for educational textboooks.

Some people just have different value scales than the rest of us.

I wonder if any of the newly-available electronic textbooks include linguistically valid histories or grammars of the English language?

Very true, and it would be confrugulous to add the every neologism has that irredufable claim. Irrespective and regardless (sorry, I mean 'irregardless') of wissent the constambulantient grammar nazi's think!

It's a word insofar as people say it... but they're confused. They're mixing up irrespective and regardless. The prefix ir- serves to negate the following word. The word the GP was looking for was just regardless, but he ended up saying the opposite.

Just straight shifting text books to computers is pretty pointless. The real idea is to create interactive tutorials and simulations backed up with reference material, typically reports covering specific subjects within a body of work that covers the topic. This more readily allows far broader input into the topic and avoids having thousands of text books covering the exact same material, in pretty much the same manner, with the only difference being the prejudices of the instructors.

Of course it's a word. You can add all sorts of prefixes and suffixes to existing words, and they will still be "real" words.

The problem here is that the word actually means the opposite of what the guy wanted to say.

It's the same as all those idiots who say "I could give a [thing]" instead of "I couldn't give a [thing]" when they are trying to imply they don't care.

They're not actually thinking about the words they're saying - they're just repeating a bunch of syllables that they've heard (or misheard) from someone else.

I saw a thread about "ain't" below. I have no problem with contractions, and don't see why anybody should. They're adding to the language in a logical manner, rather than watering it down by rendering standard prefixes and suffixes meaningless.

Being a Version Management fan, I got hold of some Second Edition of a Psych textbook back in the day, when I think the class was up to Fourth Edition. Besides saving the (then cheap!) $90, it in fact was bigger and better! I checked the introductions. Second Edition: "Blah Blah thank you to the 40 people who reviewed this, and my grant". Fourth Edition: "Streamlined with less common content removed for better initial presentation".

I also have an IT degree (shocking here, i know), and I remember in one class we were to get the 6th edition of the book, but someone wound up with a 4th edition. It was almost the exact same book, word for word, except the chapters had been reordered and some of the chapter-end questions were different. It was one of the Server 2003 classes, and this was back in 2009. Not sure how they could justify 6 editions in almost as many years regarding relatively low-level OS operations...

What do I tell people when asked what I do for a living? "Work with computers" or "IT department". Nobody really gives a crap about my "Computer Network Systems Engineering" degree. {------"IT Degree" is short for "I don't want to have to say that every time"

Also, IT books from 6 years ago are still entirely relevant. A lot of my coursework was in Server 2003 and Cisco IOS environments, of which there are still thousands upon thousands of installs out in the field. We still use a system written in BBX that was just recently moved off of a SCO Unix machine. Just because technology marches on doesn't mean knowledge becomes irrelevant. On the contrary, the older and more scarce a technology becomes, the more valuable that knowledge becomes. I hear California was looking for some COBOL programmers recently:)

Durability:
I still have textbooks from 1997,
My boss has a textbook from 1956 (borrowed from a university library, hate to imagine what 56 years of late fees look like).
My texbook gets rained on, 95% chance I can use it again.
I have a pile of broken Ipads out the back, they aren't even 3 years old yet.

Accessibility.
Ipads have about 6-7 hours of usable battery life (yes fanboys, this is what they get under real world conditions, especially after the battery has gone through a few charge (read: abuse) cycles).
Books dont run out of batteries and become unusable.

Not Enviromentally Friendly:
Right, we all know paper can be recycled right. Then made into new paper.
Sustainable forestry, try looking it up.
Ipads make more pollution when being made, then they continue to produce pollution whilst being used (they use electricity, producing electricity creates pollution).

The green angle has to be the most laughable out of all of these. Especially with Apples reputation.

You are correct, but they can have their DRM stripped and then dowloaded later from a nefarious site or simply kept. Which is what I do with my wifes Kindle rented textbooks. Strip the DRM and keep a local copy for her after the rental period ends.

My systems analysis textbook set me back almost two hundred dollars brand new. My database management book was $120 used. My professor was the author of the latter; he had said he had asked his publisher about eBook editions, and they demurred, because their profits would be cut in half.

The textbook industry needed this swift kick in the nuts to break up the racket.

Too late to tell you now, but you CAN probably share that analysis textbook w a buddy for 1/2 price. This works because system analysis depends heavily on stats and common sense. At least I remember not having to use mine a whole lot.

Past that, it depends on somebody's learning style as to the value of the textbook.. will I ever use it again? For me the answer is 95% no. The 5% I gave to a friend LOL (asp.net 1.1), they've come out w asp.net 4.0 since then (not all as forward think as you might believe).

forces you to sell only via the Apple Store. So, Apple will make 30% on every text book sold which is written in their new tool, and likey 30% on every new, yearly addition which changes a picture here or there and yet charges full price (what, you don't think this odious practice from physical books will make it into electronic textbooks?)

Talk about vendor lock-in.

And good luck trying to sell your book at the end of the year back to the Apple Store...

forces you to sell only via the Apple Store. So, Apple will make 30% on every text book sold which is written in their new tool, and likey 30% on every new, yearly addition which changes a picture here or there and yet charges full price (what, you don't think this odious practice from physical books will make it into electronic textbooks?)

Talk about vendor lock-in.

And good luck trying to sell your book at the end of the year back to the Apple Store...

Very little of that is relevant if it reduces the student's final book costs by 70%. I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?

(I yanked that 70% out of thin air, someone with better digging skills please dig up some hard numbers for us, but I can't imagine the savings being any LESS than that really, anyone that's had to pay their own college bills knows books are a complete racket)

I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?

No, I'm not so foolish as to dive head first into brand lock-in. I like having my books exist independent of one company's platform. Platform dependent books, who would have thought such nonsense would ever actually happen?

This is a problem that needs to be solved, but doing it by being stuck forever on one company's platform because they're severely anti-competitive is just stupid.

But don't the colleges already have you locked in? "Buy this and this and this for the courses you've signed up for this semester". OK, what are your options? You buy this and this and this. There is no choice other than trying to get your hands on something used. There is no shopping around. At least iBooks is cheaper. It's also a heck of a lot easier to carry to class. And how can you possibly argue with [i]searchable[/i]? There are so many advantages over dead trees it's almost magical.

I can always change colleges. And changing colleges does not negate the contents of the book, whereas I cannot access the contents of an Apple-dependent iBook from another platform (at least, not without bending over backwards.)

There is no choice other than trying to get your hands on something used.

A less known option is to buy the international version of some books, same content but a fraction of the price.

But don't the colleges already have you locked in? "Buy this and this and this for the courses you've signed up for this semester".

Now it's "Buy this and this and this, but you'll also need an ipad and those 'books' are tied to it and can't be used on any other platform." It's not like Apple has invented the ebook here, they're just trying to popularize the platform-specific ebook. Don't want an ipad? Too bad. They could have done it with an open format, or published their format, but of course that wouldn't allow them the lock-in they get with a closed format to which only their software can read and write...oh and for that software y

Very little of that is relevant if it reduces the student's final book costs by 70%. I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?

As a consumer, no. A significant portion of the value of a textbook, to me, is that I can keep it for life and use it as a reference, let other people borrow it, and, heck, pass it on to the next generation. (Certainly, when I was young, I spent a lot of time with my Dad's old text books.)

Very little of that is relevant if it reduces the student's final book costs by 70%. I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?

Hell no. It would require my students to have apple hardware and software. That places a needless financial and technological limit on my students. I do however see a market vulnerability here. Apple wants to replace the textbook cartel lock-in with their own lock-in. A reasonably priced service/app for authors

and the EULA for the authoring tool forces you to sell only via the Apple Store.

True, but we've seen this scene play out before. Apple's tool is only for getting content to sell more iPads, but as soon as there is a serious market, Adobe or someone else will be making tools that will make epub books specifically tailored for the iPad and for the leading Android and the Kindle. While I wish Apple would go with tools that publish to open standards right away I also see they are a business and want to encourage iPad sales, not just tablet sales in general. Now that we have a slick competi

And it costs you $100-$150 to even sell a book. you have to buy a ISBN number. So every book title you sell is $100 cash out of your pocket.

Do ebooks sold in the Apple Store have to have ISBN numbers?

And I don't see any of the people who are whining about "lock-in" and "profiteering" bitching about things like the UPC and ISBN Cartels, who have taken the maintenance of a simple database and turned it into an industry-wide lock-in which, much like the proverbial "Mark of the Beast" none shall trade without paying the UPC/ISBN "toll".

Yet, Apple is vilified for taking the cost of a textbook down to a fraction of its usual cost, while simultane

All of the many complaints about the 30% that Apple take for selling through their store are indignation based on ignorance of retail practices, this includes Pete Townsend. The publisher love that Apple only charge 30% because its far less than a normal retail channel. The publishers get more per sale electronically than they would selling physical books.

To answer your second point did you watch the announcement or are you just letting your predjudice define your opinions. One of the most interesting parts of the announcement was that these books would be updated, for free, meaning that you would always have the latest version. I'm still getting updates to app purchases I made on my iPhone 3 years ago. There is no reason why this wouldn't be the case for textbooks.

On your final point, rather than getting all high and mighty about it, just think about it. Why do you sell back your expensive textbooks? Partly because they are expensive. If they are cheap enough that you don't have to sell them back wouldn't it make sense to keep the book? I guess it depends on your view of education and knowledge. I view it as a life skill, something that you add to from year to year.

In general your post, and its rating, are why I've stopped look at Slashdot as a place to influence my opinion. It is filled with small minded opinion based on the status quo. I thought as geeks we were supposed to embrace change and look to the future. As with a lot in the world it seems that this happens less and less as the years go by.

What if your paper textbook could only be carried in a Dawsons Creek Ultra Futura 2000 rucksack, and nothing else? That's what we're talking about here. Want an education? Ipad required...

Apple are a business, and free to build in as much lock-in on their platforms as they please. I am hoping that we will see competing solutions, and open ones would be even better, but with Apple offering authors an easy way to publish with a bigger slice of the profits, I fear we may see the Apple platform establish

The iBook format is a "modified" version of ePub. I don't know how modified, exactly. Calibre did not seem to have any trouble reading one, once the file extension was changed from ".ibook" to ".epub".

It is ePub, but using some CSS that isn't in the official ePub spec, so while it's strictly speaking "modified", anything based on an even vaguely recent rendering engine will cope with it quite happily.

It was probably modded "Insightful" by people who want to see things like schools and colleges require textbooks in OPEN FORMATS that can be read on any platform.

This has nothing to do with Android or any other "gang" being lazy. Do you think Apple would applaud any "solution" not designed by them that would allow the public to read such books on something not controlled by Apple? Or do you think Apple would *sue* other companies for patent infringement, perhaps DCMA stuff, or whatever else they can come

Nobody prevents anyone wanting "open" textbooks from promoting their solutions. Just because they didn't/haven't/cannot, doesn't mean that they should stop Apple from push theirs. What Apple has may not be perfect (if there is such a thing), but it's light years better than what we currently have.

They lack... portability? Ok, if you have to carry 5 of them around, I see your point.
Durability? Like, when I spill coffee on mine? Or, drop it? Or, draw mustaches on the people in it?
Accessibility?.... ok, you win.
Consistent quality? So, you're going to GUARANTEE consistent content quality in eBooks?
And, of course, the ebook argument wins on searchability. But let's face it, an Index/TOC is practically just as good. Unless you're searching for absolutely every occurrence of a specific word, a good index is just as good.

But, are we really going to argue that iPads are more environmentally friendly than text books? That would be an interesting discussion.

I was going to say the same thing. They're really stretching with some of those claims, and cleverly neglecting some other aspects, like physical books don't crash or get data corruption, rarely get completely destroyed if you drop them or step on them, and until e-readers get a little more oomph I think traditional books are still easier to flip through rapidly.

until e-readers get a little more oomph I think traditional books are still easier to flip through rapidly.

Interesting point. Why should we read e-textbooks on an iPad when something like a Kindle is much cheaper, and provides a better (text) reading experience from all accounts. Ok, you can't put embedded videos, but perhaps that's a good thing (or at least a fair trade off to keep HW cost down and durability up).

I actually include Kindles and Nooks in the same category. One of the things I hate most about my Nook is it's a pain to flip back three pages and double-check a detail while I'm reading. It takes many times longer than with a physical book, and is particularly frustrating waiting for screen loads.

Much worse are books with illustrations that you need to refer to, or books with maps up front, where you'd be tempted to jump back and forth between them and your current page.

Durability? Like, when I spill coffee on mine? Or, drop it? Or, draw mustaches on the people in it?

Anecdotally, I have heard students complain that book publishers have recently introduced a different kind of glue for the books' bindings, one which degrades rather quickly, over a year or so.

A quick search isn't turning up anything about this, but I have heard it enough over the past year or so to give it some credence. Perhaps others on/. who currently are students can share their experiences in this regard.

They lack... portability? Ok, if you have to carry 5 of them around, I see your point.

Back in my day, that was a benefit. Hauling 30 pounds of books over many, many walked miles everyday in the central Texas heat made me thin and fit. UT can be a large campus when your schedule ping pongs you from one side to the other and back again all day. This was 1985, maybe things have changed:-P

College students eventually figure out that it is completely unnecessary to carry textbooks to class. It does, however, take time, so most go through the same progression: freshmen carry EVERYTHING and need to wear both straps of their backpack. Sophomores lighten the load and can use just one strap. Juniors carry a notebook. Seniors carry beer.

For me studying physics every day the e-textbook is still years away from being useful. I can agree with the portability argument but thats about it. I can, with a real, physical textbook have the following advantages over an iTextBook however:

- drop a textbook without breaking it, and even if I damage it I can still use it, not wait for my insurer

If they're anything like me, they downloaded the Author application, played with and saved a test "publication", then tossed the application into the shitcan with all the other applications that save only to proprietary venues/formats.

Author will save only to ".ibook" (a modified version of ".epub"), a crippled.pdf, or.txt (the latter without any graphics, of course). And it will not "publish" to anything but Apple's store for use on iPhones and iPads.

I have no use for such lock-in, proprietary bullshit. I'll publish my work in a.PDF instead. Sure, it will get "illegally shared" some, but as far as I am concerned that is still better than this. And there are ways to help prevent that, too.

For any publicly funded institution, it should not be legal to lock into a proprietary format and platform where an open one exists. Unfortunately, Apple targets schools with lots of freebies and advertising, so I think the future is looking a little bleak.

I'm a bit of an apple fan boy and am all for promoting them but could you please do better than directly quoting verbatim their own promotional material in the summary?

example:"...there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly"

Seriously, go to apples website and watch their promo video (it actually is pretty cool) You will find that the summary was largely directly lifted. Are you trying to use these as your own words? They are not used in the story so...

The parent is right on. The entire article reads like little more than a big advertisement for Apple. Here's a small sample.

"...there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time."
Says who? No evidence is provided to substantiate either of these claims, other than a few quotes from "a teacher" taken from an Apple promotional video(!).

"Now that there's a device that can trump the textbook in every way -- the

...it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this read-only ebook will not permit me to record.

The education industry has certainly NOT been "waiting for a viable solution like this for some time". The students have, and maybe even some sympathetic teachers, but textbooks are outrageously expensive, even the e-book versions, and somebody is profiting off it all.

A solution to the problem of expensive textbooks exists. There is an entire world of public domain textbooks out there, but all of them are useless when the professor tells you to read p.67-123 from the official textbook for a quiz tomorrow.

What I want to know is if I can resell the digital textbook once I'm done with it like with a paper-based textbook. It's one way to help offset the price of the next textbook I might buy, but knowing Apple probably not.

No but instead of paying a hundred dollars or more for the book you're paying _at most_ $15 for the iBook edition.

Now, that book you bought that you're able to resell - how much are you selling it for? I'm willing to bet you're not selling it for $15 below the price you paid for it which means the iBook costs less, even though you can't resell. You are out-of-pocket less money _and_ you get to keep the book.

It's very attractive in theory, but when I look at the license agreement I'm not sure I can go with it (About iBooks Author->License Agreement). If I use these tools and charge a fee I *have* to distribute the book through Apple. I understand the rationale. Why should the tool be free if I can turn around and distribute it somewhere else? It's only fair for Apple to expect something in return.

On the other hand I'm picturing what would happen if I put a few months work into a text, it becomes popular/useful to others, and then someone asks if other arrangements can be made for distribution (e.g., maybe someone wants to make and sell a regular paper edition). I'm stuck if I ever charged money for it.

Granted, the restriction only exists if you charge a fee. If the text is free "you may distribute the Work by any available means". This part is awesome! Full kudos to Apple for that and for making the agreement relatively simple. But what if I wanted to charge, say, $5 a textbook to help cover costs of its development and maintenance? Nothing substantial, but covering things like hiring a student to do drafting of figures, preparing photos, editing, that sort of thing. This would be publishing on the cheap rather than completely free. Unfortunately once you cross into the "fee" realm at all, you've made a deal for sole distribution with Apple, and it isn't clear whether there is any alternative.

Thus, as much as I like it, I hesitate, because I'm not certain I want to distribute my work for free rather than very cheap compared to the usual textbook. Maybe this is Apple's way to encourage people to write free works. If so, then I applaud their approach. I'm just not sure it is the way I want to go. At least with licenses like the GPL I have the *option* to charge money without having further license complications.

...if I put a few months work into a text, it becomes popular/useful to others, and then someone asks if other arrangements can be made for distribution (e.g., maybe someone wants to make and sell a regular paper edition). I'm stuck if I ever charged money for it.

No. You're not. You're misunderstanding the license restriction. The.ibooks file that iBooks Author creates can only be distributed through Apple. The book can be distributed any way you want. If you make a.ibooks file and sell it through Apple and garner some interest for a print version or a Kindle version or whatever, all you need to do is transfer the information to the new format and you can sell it.

The restriction applies to the _file_ that iBooks Author creates, not the book that you write. And, given that Apple is the only company to publish software that can (currently) read a.ibooks file, that is a reasonable restriction.

The key reason for the restriction is so that, should someone (such as a Cydia developer) create a program that can read.ibooks files, you cannot sell the.ibooks files created with iBooks Author on that store.

I have to say, I enjoyed the fact that the university I went to had none of these problems because textbooks were included. Before classes started, you went to the bookstore and got all the textbooks you needed for a flat "textbook usage fee" I think it was somewhere around like $15-20 a class. You got the version the professor was using and didn't have to worry about reselling it. About the only drawbacks is you weren't supposed to really deface it (though in reality they really didn't care) and you didn't

On the other hand, they're not encumbered by DRM, they don't vaporize after a hundred readings or a year, whichever comes first, they don't demand that you read them with Apple (R) iGlasses and they don't have to be vetted by a gatekeeper (who takes 30%) before being published.

I can throw a book across the room and it might damage the cover of a hardcover, but it will still work fine. I wouldn't want to try this with an ipad or a kindle. Under reasonable storage conditions, paper will remain readable after magnetic platters have gotten demagnetized and CDs have corroded.

Depends on volume. An iPad (Or comparable tablet) is a lot more polluting than one book, but less than a million books. Somewhere in that range is a number where they are equal, which may or may not be less than the number of books an iPad can replace for a typical student (Including a couple of novels for recreation). Estimating that number is going to be hard though.

Well, they are environmentally friendly as long as you ignore how the devices were produced, where the electricity comes from and the effects of having to replace one when the device finally fails. Not to mention the frequent resale of textbooks and that they don't require any energy to work.

"But what happens when I want to go to school with my Galaxy Tab, and I'm told that I can't get my "digital textbooks" because they're not supported on my device?"

The rest of your students don their white robes point at you and emit a screetching sound that penetrates your soul. as you run down the hallway you hear chants from the other students of...."join us, be one of us...join us...."

So until the University recommends those e-books, which they won't, it don't mean squat.

It doesn't matter if the University recommends them or not because prior to this announcement if I wanted to learn University Level Physics I had to spend $250 bucks on the textbook, now I can buy a comparable textbook from iBooks for $15.00 and receive information updates for the life of that edition.

Whether its a big deal in schools or not, though I really have a feeling this will be huge in the K-12 market, my desire to learn something isn't tied to expensive textbooks anymore. This is a good thing.

Then take the MIT courses for free. they give you the textbook as well as all the lectures in video form. And I am certian that the MIT professors teach a lot better than a podunk college professor like you find at Notre Dame, UofM, or Brown.

Define soaked. If we're talking about complete submersion for an extended time, obviously that will destroy a paper book. But if we're talking about spilling a drink on it, a book can easily survive that (maybe a couple pages get ruined at most) where as an electronic device can easily be wrecked.

And books have no problem surviving being carried around for years. I dunno what books you're using, but I have several textbooks that I purchased used, carried around, and still own to this day. They're a bit